There are currently in the prior art many designs of storage racks for storing sports equipment and particularly bicycles. One common configuration of bicycle storage rack is in the form of a floor-to-ceiling column with a support mechanism that grabs one of the tubes of a bicycle frame. A different style of bicycle rack mounts to a wall and either grips the bicycle frame with a jaw mechanism or supports the weight of the bicycle in a pair of horizontal arms. One of these latter types of bicycle racks is in the form of a rectangular board that mounts to a wall surface. The board has two outwardly extending arms which have half-circle cutouts near the distal ends, the diameter of the half circle being the approximate diameter of the tubing in a bicycle frame. The bicycle may be balanced in the half circle cutouts and thereby be supported by the protruding arms. This type of bicycle rack is efficient for storing bicycles and, in particular, appeals to bicycle riders who reside in apartments, small houses, or other spaces where storage space is a premium. The two-arm rack suspends the bike horizontally, thus permitting free rotation of the wheels, and, accordingly, the pedals can be rotated to actuate the drive mechanism for adjustment and simple maintenance thereof. However, because the extending arms are fixedly mounted to the planar board the storage rack is not readily collapsible causing two problems: namely (1) when the storage rack is not in use it cannot be configured so as to reduce the space it takes up, and (2) it takes up more space in a shipping or storage package, causing increased shipment and storage expense on its way to the retail consumer.
An alternative style of wall-mounted bicycle rack design is shown in the applicant's U.S. Pat. No. Des. 313,957 in which a bicycle is suspended by one of its wheels. The bike is stored in this type of rack by engaging the front or rear wheel with a hook and resting the bicycle wheels against the wall, essentially vertically hanging the bike from the hooked wheel. The disadvantages associated with this rack are: (1) when the bicycle is hanging from the rack, the bicycle extends substantially into the room in which it is stored because the wheels of the bicycle rest against the wall vertically and the bicycle extends outward from the wall at a right angle, (2) persons of diminutive stature frequently have difficulty raising the bicycle high enough to engage one of the wheels with the hook on the rack, and (3) when suspended on this type of rack most maintenance tasks cannot be readily carried out because the wheels are not free to rotate.